From his apartment at Two Nine North, through Twenty Ninth Street mall, across 30th Street to the industrial area to the east, then over to Boulder Junction, the new transit-oriented development being built at 30th and Pearl streets, Kevin Hotaling sees missed opportunities at every turn.

At Twenty Ninth Street, he laments the closure of Ristorante L, formerly Laudisio's. It was a successful fixture in north Boulder, but went out of business after moving to the mall. It was the only place within walking distance to which Hotaling could take a date or enjoy fine dining. Now it's gone, a victim -- in Hotaling's view -- of the shortsightedness of the entire mall development.

"If you look around, this could be a very grand place with unbelievable views," he said. "The concept makes some sense, but the execution was piss-poor. Single-use spaces are not how people want to live anymore. Going to a mall is alienating, particularly in Boulder, a city where people want to be around vibrant lifestyles.

"This should have been encouraged to be a mixed-use space."

Hotaling, a partner at Aktion Lab, a web development company, is running -- for the third time -- for a seat on Boulder City Council. The Camera asked each of the 11 candidates to take a reporter on a short tour of the city that highlights their personal and policy relationship to the community they seek to serve.

Meet the candidates

The Daily Camera asked each of the 11 City Council candidates to take a reporter on a short tour of Boulder that highlights their personal and policy relationship to the community they seek to serve. They are being published this week in no particular order.

Monday: Ed Byrne and Macon Cowles

Today: John Gerstle and Kevin Hotaling

Wednesday: Jonathan Dings and Micah Parkin

Thursday: Matt Appelbaum and Mary Young

Friday: Andrew Shoemaker and Sam Weaver

Saturday: Greatful Fred Smith

Hotaling, who does not own a car, chose to take a walking tour in a large loop through the portions of east Boulder he believes have been hurt by the city's "pie in the sky" thinking that consistently fails to deliver on its promises.

Hotaling would like to see some of this area developed into a Boulder Tech Center, with office and industrial space, dense housing, restaurants and shops.

Hotaling wants a modified height restriction of 165 feet -- roughly 15 stories and consistent with the University of Colorado's Williams Village residence halls -- in some areas of east Boulder to accommodate 20,000 new residents in a city whose growth is restricted by open space and the "blue line" to the west.

"Probably 95 percent of Boulderites in their neighborhoods cannot see or feel any impact from Will Vill," he said.

'Cliches about walkability'

Developing this Boulder Tech Center would address all three of the city's sustainability goals, Hotaling said. It would enhance economic sustainability by providing a place for successful start-ups to move when they outgrow smaller downtown offices, as well as Class A office space for larger companies. The new residents also would generate more economic activity and tax revenue, instead of returning to Lafayette or Louisville to shop there, he said.

It would enhance social sustainability by providing more affordable market-rate housing, he said. And it would enhance environmental sustainability by greatly reducing the number of in-commuters and generating far more energy-efficient housing than single-family residential or even smaller apartment buildings.

"If this environmental problem is as bad as they say it is, then it means we need to take real action," he said. "Your mountain views are great. And your fear of sharing your city with another 20,000 people, that's an understandable fear. But is that fear and that mountain-view desire what drives our policy? And is that more important than creating some substantive change on our environmental impact?"

As if to underscore Hotaling's point about how unfriendly east Boulder is to pedestrians, a driver making a left turn honks at him in the crosswalk, even though Hotaling has the walk signal, just as he is expounding on "cliches about walkability."

"See what a pleasant, walkable neighborhood this is?" he said in response.

Developing east Boulder according to this plan would be a more reliable way to cut the city's greenhouse gas emissions than the proposed municipal electric utility, Hotaling said.

'Turns out to be snake oil'

As Hotaling nears the conclusion of his tour at Boulder Junction, he refers sarcastically to the area through which he has just walked, which was largely devoid of foot traffic on a weekday morning.

"Now you've gotten a sense of the neighborhood and the community values and you saw all my friends who said 'hi' as I walked down the street, and here we are at the cornerstone of Boulder Junction," he said as construction equipment growled behind him and trucks rumbled by in front. "Well, the cornerstone will be the train, but that doesn't come until 2042, and it's totally irrelevant because in 2022 we'll have self-driving automated vehicles that will pick us up and take us from place to place -- so why would I take a train?

"But until then, this is Boulder Junction: two meager, pretty ugly buildings in the middle of an industrial complex."

Hotaling draws a clear line from Twenty Ninth Street to Boulder Junction. If the mall were being planned today, it would be done differently, but Boulder continues to pursue "pie-in-the-sky" grand visions that achieve the opposite of their stated goals, he said.

"There is 95 percent consensus opinion that this is the next great Boulder project, and, in five years, there will be 95 percent consensus that this was the last major Boulder failure," he said. "And we do this every 10 years. We're sold a different pipe dream, and it turns out to be snake oil."

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